Sunday - Breakfast - Raisin, Hazelnuts, Mixed dried Fruit Bread

This was our breakfast today, or we called it "Colanzo" (a sort of Brunch "translated in Italian, between "colazione" and "pranzo").
Yesterday I wanted to bake something out of my new cookbook, but I hadn't got so many of the ingredients of the loaf of bread I had chosen. But I had a lot of other similar ingredients instead. So I just replaced all of the ingredients of the original recipe (expect for hazelnuts) with the alternative ones and here's my loaf of bread. Yummy!
Fresh yeast insted of baking powder, milk instead of buttermilk, mixed dried fruit and raisins instead of dried apricots, "00" and whole wheat flour combined instead of rye flour, and I could go on and on =)

Along with the bread we drank coffee and ate a mandarin.
Ready for a new day!

I hope yo all had a great weekend.

Juliette

Sunday - Breakfast - Sinterklaas Edition

Yesterday Roberto and I celebrated Sinterklaas, which is to be celebrated this evening actually, but since we won't be together this evening and he will be 200 km away, we did it yesterday.
We had lots of fun in the afternoon baking Pepernoten and Taai taai. Those are two Sinterklaas treats. Since we live in Italy and it would be a miracle to find them in the store, we baked them.
It was an adventure because, they had to be like I have always had them, since I was a child. I am an expert ^^.
We spent wonderful moments together (I will post some photos in another post) and had much fun.



This morning we woke up hearing my neighbours quarelling as every day (it's getting annoying after two years), but we had a smile on our faces. There were some Pepernoten left so we ate some of them. I made fruit tea and a banana shake. Yesterday morning Roberto had surprised me with chocolate because it is a tradition having a chocolate letter (the initial of your name) for Sinterklaas, and I was a bit sad, because I love traditions, and I want to hold them tight. Obviously we hadn't got a chocolate letter, so he bought some chocolate for me. And he ate the last bit this morning =).

If you want to try this traditional Dutch recipe here you have the recipe of Pepernoten. If you like Gingerbread and spicy cookies I warmly suggest you to try them out. They're so yummy!


Pepernoten.

250 g (8,8 oz) flour
125 g (4,4 oz) brown sugar
100 g (3,5 oz) unsalted butter, softened
2 TBS Speculaas spices (*see ingredients below)
3 TBS milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
salt


Preheat the oven at 150 °C (300 F).
Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, spices, baking powder, salt)
Add softened butter (I used molted butter) and milk.
Knead until a soft ball is formed (it's quite a thick dough)
Form small balls and place them on parchment paper, press a little.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Allow to cool afterwards (unlike other cookies they're much better if tasted cold).
Oh, and try them with a glass of cold milk! =)

Speculaas spices
I went to a herbalist's shop for these, with my father. I suggest you to do the same because it's cheaper, it's better and you will remember the nice smell of the shop.

30 g (1,05 oz) cinnamon
10 g (0,35 oz) cloves
10 g (o,35 oz) nutmeg
5 g (0,17 oz) white pepper
5 g (o,17 oz) aniseed
5 g (0,17oz) coriander seeds

Mix all the spices together in a jar and close. You cak keep these spices for a long while.


I can tell we had the best weekend. It was so cold outside but we managed to do so many nice things.
In 4 days I'll be 21, I am thinking of making a "21 before 22 list" and I am pondering if starting a 365 project this year (tha last one is almost sure)

Sunday - Breakfast - Coffee, Muesli and Mandarines

Hello!
This was our fantastic breakfast this morning. No baking involved, but Nutella and biological bread for Roberto, muesli for me, Cinnamon coffee and mandarines. Smells like winter!



I should be in the city now, but all the trains were cancelled, so I am still home. Tomorrow morning I'll have to try again, have 4 hours of classes and then it will already be evening, so I don't know if I'll have time to write anything.

Have a nice Monday!

Juliette

Sunday - Breakfast - Knuffel Cookies

There is one brand of cookies and bread in Italy that always shows the "ideal" family in its ads.
It's so well-known that people often say "They are like the Mulino Bianco family" describing a perfect family.
This brand produces cookies called "Abbracci" (Hugs), chocolate and vanilla cookies that Roberto and I made yesterday evening (the dough) and this morning (baked).
I called them "Knuffels" because it means sweet hugs in Dutch.


This time I had only the problem that I hadn't enough flour (how can that happen in my house, I've always flour everywhere!). So I had to let the dough rest overnights because otherwise it would have been too fluffy to use it.

We ate our Knuffels with a mandarin and a cup of milk. And this time they were even good-looking.


Cacao - Vanilla Cookies - Knuffels
Vanilla dough
250 g flour (8,8 oz)
100 g sugar (3,5 oz)
50 g softened unsalted butter (1,7 oz)
45 g margarine, softened (1,56 oz)
1 teaspoon honey
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a sprinkle of salt
3 Tablespoons of cream

Cacao dough
260 g flour (9,1 oz)
120 g sugar (4,2 oz)
40 g margarine, softened (1,4 oz)
60 g softened unsalted butter (2,1 oz)
30 g cacao powder (unsweetened) (1 oz)
40 ml milk (1 cup)
1 egg
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
a sprinkle of salt

Vanilla dough
Mix butter, margarine and sugar until a fluffy cream is formed.
Add all the other ingredients, the last will be the flour and the baking powder.

Cacao dough
Same process, different ingredients.
Mix butter, margarine and sugar until a fluffy cream is formed.
Add all the other ingredients, the last will be the flour and the baking powder.

Place parchment paper on a baking pan and pre-heat the oven at 180 °C (350 F)
Take a piece of vanilla dough and make small rolls in the form of half a doughnut (or a half-moon) and place on the sheet parchment paper.
Make ather half-moons with the cacao dough and join them to the vanilla ones (please watch the pictures, I'm not good at explaining it).
Place in the oven for 10-15 minutes until the vanilla dough gets golden.
Allow to cool on a rack for 10 minutes.



Here you have a nice Sunday breakfast without disasters this time =)

Have a nice day, mine certainly was.

Juliette

Sunday - Breakfast

Why Sunday breakfast?

Well, there only one day a week (or maybe two) when I really eat a proper breakfast, sitting down, enjoying the morning, getting ready for the day.. and that’s Sunday.

Every week I will try to take a picture of what has been devoured this time and maybe share some recipes.

I have a list of the sweetest things I want to bake and I know that if I don’t “have to” write a post about it, I should always find an excuse not to try them out.

And if I dream of opening a bakery, I have to bake on!

So, let’s start with..

Oat cinnamon cookies (they looked great, didn't they? Until..)

I love oats and I love cookies which are not too sugary and I adore cinnamon, so what better than these cookies. There were a semi-fail because the oven I have here is, I don't know why, I son't know how, hotter that the one I have home, at the same temperature. I rally don't understand those things. But. They "browned" a bit more on the edges and sticked together (I had to cut them). Shall we call it fail insted of semi-fail?
But they were yummy and I gave Roberto a huge box with the ones we left. So he has cookies for this week ^^.
I found the recipe here and used less sugar and no lemon zest because I didn't have. So here's my version:
Ingredients.
250 gr oats (8,8 oz)
50 gr almonds (chopped)
100 gr sugar (3,5 oz)
100 gr butter (3,5 oz), softened
2 eggs
2 teaspoons cinnamon
8 gr baking powder



In a large bowl combine oats, almonds, sugar and softened butter.
Add the two eggs and the cinnamon and at last add baking powder.
Knead the dough with your hands until the ingredients will be well blended.
Make a lot of small dough balls (around 15 gr each, 0,5 oz) and place them on a baking tray covered with baking parchment at a huuuuge distance one from the other because I did it and they melted anyway until meeting eachother in a big mess.
Place in the oven for 20 minutes at 180 °C (360 F).

(insert saaad face here ) =(

That was not the best beginning for a new section in this blog, but I hope you'll enjoy my disadventures.
Have a great sunday!

Juliette

Missing someone

This weekend Roberto came here. We went to Ikea to buy some new bookshelves because a few days ago the one I had in my room just decided that he was too tired of carrying dictionaries.

Obviously I cannot leave Ikea without buying something superfluous, but immensely pretty



We just walked through the store saying "We will buy this when we'll have our house" "This would be so nice to have in our kitchen",.. Dreaming and dreaming.

Well, the weekend has been wonderful, as always, but when he leaves I am always so sad!
Today I tried not to think about it, but it's difficult when outside it's pouring, it's cold, and the only thing you need is his hug (and a cup of tea!).
So I just drawed a bit and catched up with the blogs I haven't read saturday.

My evening so far


And now I am thinking of really makng that cup of tea and make some leaves with fimo.
Oh, and.. I made up a wonderful recipe for Muesli (granola) scones. Recipe will be posted soon =).

Goodnight!

Juliette